Following in the footsteps of Christian Rivera, aka "IWillDominate," who was banned from competition last month due to harassing behavior, two additional League of Legends competitors have been blacklisted from the game for the next year. Both Damien "Linak" Lorthios and Ilyas "enVision" Hartsema will spend the next twelve months watching League of Legends tournaments rather than showcasing their own skills.

The rulings were revealed on the official LoL forums, along with with details of why the suspensions were put in place. According to the posting, both Harsema and Lorthios engaged in verbal abuse during competitive play, tallying more conduct reports than should be humanly possible. Hartsema was reported in 29% of his total matches, which is six times as much as the average European LoL player. Lorthios, while not quite as deplorable, was still reprimanded for 20% of his matches.

One of Hartsema's accounts managed to rack up 436 conduct reports in just 135 matches, and his current harassment score puts him in the top 0.06% of all EU players. Keep in mind, this is a guy who makes money from playing the game.

The banning of Hartsema and Lorthios is good news for the eSports community, but it does put their respective teams in a tough spot. The League of Legends Championship Series season three qualifying round is set to kick off in just a few days, so some fast and furious replacements are likely in order.

On one hand this is good, on the other hand this is done entirely by an automated system apparently. The justification for these guys getting banned is based on the percentage of complaints/reports filed rather than specific incidents and things they did.

The problem with automated systems is that they are easily abused, we've already had plenty of horror stories about people being locked out of their accounts due to automated systems, after having done very little. I myself had a problem (albiet one that never went that far) when I noticed my Gamer Rep on XBL dropping playing online fighting games because half the time I'd beat someone they would report me for unsportsmanlike conduct or something else, a routine behavior with a lot of that community. I wound up stopping playing fighting games over XBL as a result.

See, in a case like this when it comes to dominant players you have to ask, how many people were complaining because they actually did something, or because they just didn't like the player or losing to them.

To me, I'd rather hear that someone working for the company descended with the mighty banhammer after personally catching them saying "X, X, and Y" to other players, than hearing "oh well, the guy had complaints in 29% of his matches" which from my own experience could just be people throwing tantrums similar to what I've run into (and I'm not even good at fighting games, god forbid what it's like for some of the pros in MOBA games and such).

The way this sounds, unless they present some actual proof, I'd actually be considering a lawsuit if it was costing me money via tournament participation, and accuse the company of trying to load the tourney.

In a more general sense, when I briefly returned to WoW to try "Pandas" (which was meh) I had to go through an act of congress to re-activate my account due to Blizzard's automated system having shut it down for cheating... when it was an inactive account (and was intact as far as I could tell when I actually got in). I've also been threatened by automated systems detecting improper behavior with other online games I wasn't even playing or didn't even have installed (and even re-installed them to check it out and found nada).

In short, I put absolutly no faith in any kind of automated "recognition" software, and even less faith in any kind of impersonal system by which one player can "report" another for any reason and have it go into some kind of meaningful record without human involvement. IMO these companies need to actually hire some bloody people, and stop trying to cut corners by automating everything. Especially Blizzard... really, there is no excuse for some of the crap I've gotten from them (always bureaucratic stuff, not user complaints). "Your account has been locked out due to improper behavior" Rly? My account that hasn't been on for 2 years was trying to sell gold? The one that has all of it's gold and items intact? I've been detected trying to sell my Diablo 3 account, the one with my mighty Level 17 Wizard (since I wound up not caring much for the game)... I'm sure people were lining up by the thousands for that one. :)

On one hand this is good, on the other hand this is done entirely by an automated system apparently. The justification for these guys getting banned is based on the percentage of complaints/reports filed rather than specific incidents and things they did.

The problem with automated systems is that they are easily abused, we've already had plenty of horror stories about people being locked out of their accounts due to automated systems, after having done very little. I myself had a problem (albiet one that never went that far) when I noticed my Gamer Rep on XBL dropping playing online fighting games because half the time I'd beat someone they would report me for unsportsmanlike conduct or something else, a routine behavior with a lot of that community. I wound up stopping playing fighting games over XBL as a result.

See, in a case like this when it comes to dominant players you have to ask, how many people were complaining because they actually did something, or because they just didn't like the player or losing to them.

To me, I'd rather hear that someone working for the company descended with the mighty banhammer after personally catching them saying "X, X, and Y" to other players, than hearing "oh well, the guy had complaints in 29% of his matches" which from my own experience could just be people throwing tantrums similar to what I've run into (and I'm not even good at fighting games, god forbid what it's like for some of the pros in MOBA games and such).

The way this sounds, unless they present some actual proof, I'd actually be considering a lawsuit if it was costing me money via tournament participation, and accuse the company of trying to load the tourney.

In a more general sense, when I briefly returned to WoW to try "Pandas" (which was meh) I had to go through an act of congress to re-activate my account due to Blizzard's automated system having shut it down for cheating... when it was an inactive account (and was intact as far as I could tell when I actually got in). I've also been threatened by automated systems detecting improper behavior with other online games I wasn't even playing or didn't even have installed (and even re-installed them to check it out and found nada).

In short, I put absolutly no faith in any kind of automated "recognition" software, and even less faith in any kind of impersonal system by which one player can "report" another for any reason and have it go into some kind of meaningful record without human involvement. IMO these companies need to actually hire some bloody people, and stop trying to cut corners by automating everything. Especially Blizzard... really, there is no excuse for some of the crap I've gotten from them (always bureaucratic stuff, not user complaints). "Your account has been locked out due to improper behavior" Rly? My account that hasn't been on for 2 years was trying to sell gold? The one that has all of it's gold and items intact? I've been detected trying to sell my Diablo 3 account, the one with my mighty Level 17 Wizard (since I wound up not caring much for the game)... I'm sure people were lining up by the thousands for that one. :)

This is misinformation. The Tribunal Banning system only sends the player to the Riot Punishment staff for review. Every time a player is banned, a Riot staff member signed off on it. You don't get to that point without being reported and voted on in the Tribunal, but to say it was a ban from an Automatic system is incorrect.

OT:

Good to see the system working to improve a community voted as the worst in gaming. Not even "Pros" should be exempt.

Eh... what? He was baned by majority decision of the Tribunal - a communitydriven platform. The reports are collected, presented to random players and depending on the voting results are directed to employees of Riot. So all your text is... meaningless.

Since I'm already the third person telling you that the LoL tribunal is simply not an "automated system" I'll leave it here, but all your post is irrelevant to the thread because you're obviously not talking about LoL here.

Oh wait, aren't you that guy who talked about how a "serious gamer" is someone with "above average intelligence, often significantly so" that one time?

Therumancer: On one hand this is good, on the other hand this is done entirely by an automated system apparently. The justification for these guys getting banned is based on the percentage of complaints/reports filed rather than specific incidents and things they did.

It isn't automated at all - those reports were all reviewed by the community through the Tribunal, which is a community driven paid jurist system, basically. The community reviewers get the full chatlog from the game, the reasons players reported the defendant/asshole/whatever, and their stats in the game (ie their K/A/D, item build, etc), and decide whether or not the defendant/asshole crossed the line with their behavior. These reports are shown to some number of players to get a consensus and then the guilty/pardon results are reported back to Riot.

Being a "pro" player does not remove the ability to act like a total asshole.

And they should be treated as such. I know you already put the *pro-sports* analogy thingy but I see it more as a professional thing, its his job afterall. If you harass co-workers/customers you get in trouble, simple as.

This is misinformation. The Tribunal Banning system only sends the player to the Riot Punishment staff for review. Every time a player is banned, a Riot staff member signed off on it. You don't get to that point without being reported and voted on in the Tribunal, but to say it was a ban from an Automatic system is incorrect.

Good to see the system working to improve a community voted as the worst in gaming. Not even "Pros" should be exempt.

I mean "Woohoo, two jerks got banned. Yay." and all that jazz but still, this isn't exactly breaking news now is it? :P

Except that they were paid pros. That's not exactly common...

Actually, no it isn't. Only the FINAL PERMANENT ban is signed off by a rioter. The other bans? They are 100% automated by Tribunal. You would notice this if you paid attention to the forums when everytime there is a flood of forum threads the number one question I asked was "when were you banned" and it was always the same answer that it was on a same day they make their thread. However, for permabans is when a rioter does look at it and their policy is to "maintain the standards of the community" and right now with an 85% punish rate in tribunal there really is no forgiveness.

Hell we haven't even discussed how subjective and biased the tribunal system is or should a company act as if they know better or should be in a position to act like some government or as a parent for a bunch of adults around the world when each person has different morals and standards. Where one person swearing or dirty jokes is the norm while another yells harassment.

It's quite amazing how it took way over 500 reports for a player to get banned.

You might not agree with me, but I think that it should take A LOT less than that for a player to be banned. And top 0.06? While that's not really as much as it seems considering how many people play league, I bet they put off banning these players for so long because they didn't want to harm their competitive scene...

It's quite pathetic really... Bans in League are not handed out enough considering how vile the community is...

I also think that the game should require an initial purchase. When a player gets banned, they literally just create a new account within 5 seconds. If the game were to initially cost about $10, it would stop people from not only creating new accounts to ban hop, but it would also help new players and stop them from constantly being grouped with smurfs.

scw55:Besides, they probably would have won 16% more games.(This is a Tip that pops up on pre-game loading screens. The actual % was guessed as I have a bad memory. I thought it'd be a funny joke).

I thought it was funny. Even though I think that number is skewed because how much of those are games going poorly and then the players berate each other? The cause and the effect aren't so clear cut.

A Smooth Criminal:It's quite amazing how it took way over 500 reports for a player to get banned.

You might not agree with me, but I think that it should take A LOT less than that for a player to be banned. And top 0.06? While that's not really as much as it seems considering how many people play league, I bet they put off banning these players for so long because they didn't want to harm their competitive scene...

.06% (or .0006) is an extremely small group of the population. In all of LoL it estimates down to the most reported 600.This game has over a million people playing and this person is in the top 600 for being reported. That is significant.

I mean "Woohoo, two jerks got banned. Yay." and all that jazz but still, this isn't exactly breaking news now is it? :P

The banning of professional - and therefore visible and important - players for bad conduct is actually quite important for a number of reasons. LoL has a huge reputation for being chock full of horrible people and harassment, and the ban shows that LoL community itself is pretty damn sick of jerk behavior. Also, punishing the best of the best sends a very specific message. Whether it's one that will ultimately be imitated by other games remains to be seen, of course, but this is exactly the kind of thing a lot of the gaming community has been waiting for. Trash talk is part of the competitive nature of gaming, but there is pretty clearly a line between what is and is not acceptable, and that line is being made more clear every day.

This is misinformation. The Tribunal Banning system only sends the player to the Riot Punishment staff for review. Every time a player is banned, a Riot staff member signed off on it. You don't get to that point without being reported and voted on in the Tribunal, but to say it was a ban from an Automatic system is incorrect.

Good to see the system working to improve a community voted as the worst in gaming. Not even "Pros" should be exempt.

I mean "Woohoo, two jerks got banned. Yay." and all that jazz but still, this isn't exactly breaking news now is it? :P

Except that they were paid pros. That's not exactly common...

Actually, no it isn't. Only the FINAL PERMANENT ban is signed off by a rioter. The other bans? They are 100% automated by Tribunal. You would notice this if you paid attention to the forums when everytime there is a flood of forum threads the number one question I asked was "when were you banned" and it was always the same answer that it was on a same day they make their thread. However, for permabans is when a rioter does look at it and their policy is to "maintain the standards of the community" and right now with an 85% punish rate in tribunal there really is no forgiveness.

Hell we haven't even discussed how subjective and biased the tribunal system is or should a company act as if they know better or should be in a position to act like some government or as a parent for a bunch of adults around the world when each person has different morals and standards. Where one person swearing or dirty jokes is the norm while another yells harassment.

Yeah, the 3-day bans are signed off by the Tribunal... considering it takes 20 or 30 reports just to get the warning before you even get to that point. The punish rate is so high because those reports usually accurately reflect the player who is getting reported. It doesn't take a genius to see if someone is spamming "ni**er" and "fa**ot" all game long, that player shouldn't be around.

The community in LoL is so bad, it causes new players to not continue playing. That's why the Tribunal was made. Because maybe you don't mind someone calling everyone on your team a "cock-sucking fag", but many other people don't.

BiH-Kira:You get reported in LoL for saying "gg" at the end of the match if you dominated the game.Anyone who thinks that the amount of reports in LoL shows anything is delusional.

And that report is summarily ignored. People who over report get their vote weight reduced to compensate. No one has ever been banned for just saying "gg".

A Smooth Criminal:It's quite amazing how it took way over 500 reports for a player to get banned.

You might not agree with me, but I think that it should take A LOT less than that for a player to be banned. And top 0.06? While that's not really as much as it seems considering how many people play league, I bet they put off banning these players for so long because they didn't want to harm their competitive scene...

It's quite pathetic really... Bans in League are not handed out enough considering how vile the community is...

I also think that the game should require an initial purchase. When a player gets banned, they literally just create a new account within 5 seconds. If the game were to initially cost about $10, it would stop people from not only creating new accounts to ban hop, but it would also help new players and stop them from constantly being grouped with smurfs.

The need to purchase (and therefore less smurfing trolls) is the main reason DOTA is considered to have a marginally better community than LoL. There are so many smurf trolls at low levels that the Riot staff has openly told new players to play against bots until Level 15 to avoid them.

KEM10:.06% (or .0006) is an extremely small group of the population. In all of LoL it estimates down to the most reported 600.This game has over a million people playing and this person is in the top 600 for being reported. That is significant.

How do you manage to get 600 from 0.06?

Also, there are a lot more than a million people playing League of Legends...

You might wanna put another 0 on the end of that and change the 1 to something else...

A Smooth Criminal:It's quite amazing how it took way over 500 reports for a player to get banned.

You might not agree with me, but I think that it should take A LOT less than that for a player to be banned. And top 0.06? While that's not really as much as it seems considering how many people play league, I bet they put off banning these players for so long because they didn't want to harm their competitive scene...

It's quite pathetic really... Bans in League are not handed out enough considering how vile the community is...

I also think that the game should require an initial purchase. When a player gets banned, they literally just create a new account within 5 seconds. If the game were to initially cost about $10, it would stop people from not only creating new accounts to ban hop, but it would also help new players and stop them from constantly being grouped with smurfs.

A Smooth Criminal:It's quite amazing how it took way over 500 reports for a player to get banned.

You might not agree with me, but I think that it should take A LOT less than that for a player to be banned. And top 0.06? While that's not really as much as it seems considering how many people play league, I bet they put off banning these players for so long because they didn't want to harm their competitive scene...

It's quite pathetic really... Bans in League are not handed out enough considering how vile the community is...

I also think that the game should require an initial purchase. When a player gets banned, they literally just create a new account within 5 seconds. If the game were to initially cost about $10, it would stop people from not only creating new accounts to ban hop, but it would also help new players and stop them from constantly being grouped with smurfs.

The need to purchase (and therefore less smurfing trolls) is the main reason DOTA is considered to have a marginally better community than LoL. There are so many smurf trolls at low levels that the Riot staff has openly told new players to play against bots until Level 15 to avoid them.

That's my point, honestly if DotA 2 had a tutorial I'd recommend all new players to that instead of League, and simply give them the slightly off argument but still reasonably accurate one of "It's essentially the same as League, but without the call of duty community"

I mean "Woohoo, two jerks got banned. Yay." and all that jazz but still, this isn't exactly breaking news now is it? :P

Actually, I appreciate the occasional heads-up that MMO communities are trying to manage the worst behavior within their own ranks.

LoL is an MMO now? Now that certainly is breaking news.

Lets see: you can't play LoL off-line, so it definitely is Online (check), every match is with several other players, from two in co-op Twisted Treeline to nine in pvp Classic or Dominion, so there goes Multiplayer (check) and there is a ton of people (32 million active players monthly) playing world wide, which I dare suggest warrants the label of Massive (check), so there you go - MMO for you.

As for the article? Well, guess they deserved that, didn't they. Not much else to say, really.

Actually, I appreciate the occasional heads-up that MMO communities are trying to manage the worst behavior within their own ranks.

LoL is an MMO now? Now that certainly is breaking news.

Lets see: you can't play LoL off-line, so it definitely is Online (check), every match is with several other players, from two in co-op Twisted Treeline to nine in pvp Classic or Dominion, so there goes Multiplayer (check) and there is a ton of people (32 million active players monthly) playing world wide, which I dare suggest warrants the label of Massive (check), so there you go - MMO for you.

As for the article? Well, guess they deserved that, didn't they. Not much else to say, really.

It's 6 to 10 players on a map. That's not massive. The term "Massively" Applies to a number of players playing simultaneously within the same server. Saying LoL is an MMO is like saying CoD3 is an MMO Or that the mass effect multiplayer is an MMO. They're not.

And they should be treated as such. I know you already put the *pro-sports* analogy thingy but I see it more as a professional thing, its his job afterall. If you harass co-workers/customers you get in trouble, simple as.

Yeah. There's not really any other comments I can make.They acted like assholes, and it eventually got them banned.

I guess I could state that their average report-% being much higher than average is kind of anomalous, and maybe a sign of some prior favoritism on Riot's part, but now they're banned so...I dunno.

A Smooth Criminal:It's quite amazing how it took way over 500 reports for a player to get banned.

You might not agree with me, but I think that it should take A LOT less than that for a player to be banned. And top 0.06? While that's not really as much as it seems considering how many people play league, I bet they put off banning these players for so long because they didn't want to harm their competitive scene...

It's quite pathetic really... Bans in League are not handed out enough considering how vile the community is...

I also think that the game should require an initial purchase. When a player gets banned, they literally just create a new account within 5 seconds. If the game were to initially cost about $10, it would stop people from not only creating new accounts to ban hop, but it would also help new players and stop them from constantly being grouped with smurfs.

The need to purchase (and therefore less smurfing trolls) is the main reason DOTA is considered to have a marginally better community than LoL. There are so many smurf trolls at low levels that the Riot staff has openly told new players to play against bots until Level 15 to avoid them.

Except this begs the question. When you get rid of all the people who make death threats and such in the game, who exactly is left for The Tribunal to judge? What becomes the standards of what is considered unacceptable?

I can tell you for a fact that most players I know now aren't banned for making racist remarks or making death threats, you know things that are against the actual law. But instead the majority of bans I read in tribunal are very simple statements that even a single moment in a very high stress competitive game where a person types in "fuck you" is now punished.

That is one of the mechanical flaws of tribunal. Where exactly will it end when you have a machine that is in a constant motion that is all based on subjective behavior. I also forgot to mention that we haven't even discussed the fact that one of the hard truths of social interaction and with online games is that for the most part you are going to be playing with strangers. One of the hard facts of life is that not everyone is going to get along especially when interacting with strangers. Most of the time a bad experience with a stranger in a real life scenario won't result in you or someone else physically stopping them and trying to correct their behavior as if they were that person's parent. The reality is that one would most likely tell that stranger to fuck off, or just walk away from them and then later with friends tell them a story of the jackass they met today. The way I look at it, the tribunal is socially awkward in this respect trying to correct the behaviors of other adults in a social setting. And since Riot certainly isn't enforcing the actual law, players are left with this invisible hand where one game it's all okay and fine to swear but the next even simply typing the word shit not directed at anyone will get a player punished.

Good to see, so many developers bend over backwards for their "pro" players and wouldn't dare even think about banning them, Riot doing this means that the rest of the "pros" might have to modulate their behavior a bit which may cause a trickle-down effect on the rest of the community.

Lets see: you can't play LoL off-line, so it definitely is Online (check), every match is with several other players, from two in co-op Twisted Treeline to nine in pvp Classic or Dominion, so there goes Multiplayer (check) and there is a ton of people (32 million active players monthly) playing world wide, which I dare suggest warrants the label of Massive (check), so there you go - MMO for you.

As for the article? Well, guess they deserved that, didn't they. Not much else to say, really.

It's 6 to 10 players on a map. That's not massive. The term "Massively" Applies to a number of players playing simultaneously within the same server. Saying LoL is an MMO is like saying CoD3 is an MMO Or that the mass effect multiplayer is an MMO. They're not.

And now we can get into how many concurrent games are being played on one LoL server and fine nuances of the "Massive" part of MMO, however, I don't consider myself knowledgeable enough in the field to try and persuade you about my truth, so lets agree that some consensus most likely exist and our discussion of it would be rather fruitless.